Mobility Matters | July 15th, 2025 | Episode 32

July 15, 2025 | Episode 32 | 1,711 words ~8 minute read

All opinions expressed below are mine and not those of my employer, Shell Ventures.

If you were forwarded this and would like to receive future versions directly in your inbox, please sign up here.

Hi all,

After a short, unplanned hiatus we are back! This time I would call your attention to the big section on consolidation and corporate development moves, and from the reports section IEA, BNEF and Strategy& all have really good work on the EV and Charging landscapes. It’s been too long, no further ado, let’s get right to it.

Recent Reports

A couple of annual flagship reports have come out that are worth a look every year, the IEA’s Global EV Outlook is consistently a good source of data and insights. I thought this one comparing EV and ICE equivalent pricing in China, Germany and the US to be quite telling. We really are in three separate auto markets.

BNEF has published their equivalent EV Outlook, and for my money I like the IEA report for the historical data and the BNEF for the forward looking trends. The most striking of which is this updated forecast of EV penetration in the US due to gestures vaguely all around…yeah, those things.

Strategy& has their latest EV Charging Market Update out, but the image that I kept coming back to is one on OEM volumes and profitability, showing who needs to make the switch to keep the momentum going. This is a really good report guys - you should go read it. (If you want a companion reader Roland Berger has a similar report out.)

Transport and Energy (T&E, I use them as a source pretty regularly) has their annual State of European Transport out, and if anyone wondered why Europe is so much more committed to sustainability, this chart should help clear that up.

The IMO held MEPC 83 in London and Lloyds has a very good set of reviews of the outcomes there. It’s not the most straightforward plan, but does seem to be on the more ambitious side of the options they had available to them. I’d suggest reading the Lloyds general update, the responses from T&E and ICCT, and for those who have time, the Lloyds overall report is worthwhile as is the BCG report (see image in last bullet below)
This from CapGemini is a bit too survey dependent for my taste, but I found this graphic a helpful starting point on current (~scaled) battery capabilities.

Deloitte and Climate First put out a recent report on non-dilutive funding pathways - this is worth reviewing for anyone in earlier stage companies.
Telematics company Geotab put out a data backed report on the ability to electrify medium and heavy duty trucking. This one is better to be read in its entirety rather than for me to pull things out, but I was struck by the following findings, which honestly I would have thought were higher.
- 58% of medium-duty trucks are electrifiable and
- 41% of heavy-duty trucks are electrifiable.
Especially interesting in light of eFreight 2030’s eHGV purchasing report - the following summary stat sheet was pretty stunning given how shallow zero emission vehicles have penetrated the fleet, but how deeply that slice is BEV.

A competitor of Geotab’s, Samsara, put out an equally interesting report on distracted driving. For anyone still skeptical of the benefits of autonomous trucking I’d suggest at least reading the exec summary. The mobile device use is particularly frightening.

Let me preface this by saying I think T&E is a really smart outfit that does really good work and this report from them on e-SAF in Europe is very much a “must read’, but boy are they a lot more optimistic on the near term costs, adoption, and fossil-based penalties than I am. Increasing the costs of peoples holidays is going to be really unpopular.

I’ll forever be leery of extrapolating too much from reports based solely on surveys, but if you’re going to do it then repeating it annually is the way to go. BCG just did that with a maritime decarbonization study and if you’re in the sector it’s worth engaging. The best part though is probably this visualization of the MEPC 83 outcomes.

In related news, MIT published a study that says burning heavy fuel oil (HFO) with scrubbers is less harmful than running vessels on marine gas oil (MGO). No pull chart because I bet this isn’t the most popular link, but I have to include it because the answer was surprising to me.

Recent News

Let’s just get this out of the way - I’m not going to do a lot on tariffs here, even though they are a hot topic, until we actually have clarity on them. The constant waffling back and forth doesn’t align well with the longer timeframes I write this newsletter on. What I will do is link to this survey from BCG on supply chain execs and what’s bothering them.

I know we are supposed to be all gloom and doom about EV sales, but EV sales in the EU are up nearly 30% YoY in the first 5 months of the year. Can we do better? Sure. Is the sky falling? No chicken little, it is not.
That said, I will keep banging the drum that to increase this rate one thing we need are cheaper EVs. I’m mixing geographies but this list of the 14 cheapest EVs is sort of depressing.

I remain a skeptic of air taxis, but credit where it’s due; Joby is making progress and flying piloted (though not yet passenger laden) flights, and Beta has landed at JFK.
For my money, Jim Farley of Ford is the one CEO of American and European OEMs who really understands the threat posed by Chinese OEMs. Whether anything can be done with the structural and systemic issues as they are…TBD, but they have a plan.
He’s also pretty funny and not afraid of calling out competitors when needed - as his Tesla AV comments show.
This one's a little…I dunno, random maybe? Fortescue has unveiled a self-sustaining, zero emission train.
Look, this drone delivery from Deliveroo is a bit of a gimmick, but I’m definitely the audience for it. I’m less here for the humanoid robot gimmick from Amazon.
One thing I’m getting more and more interested in is the decarbonization of heavy duty - I’m more bought in to electrification as the rule and everything else as the exception, but Toyota and VDL putting a bunch of fuel cell HGVs on the road is at least a good challenge to that viewpoint.
In a great reminder that when we use computers for everything, everything has computer problems Zoomcar suffered a “minor” data breach of 8.4m users data.
VW’s new CEO says the Cariad software division is doing better. I hope that ‘s true because the unit's failures were a large part of why his predecessor lost that job. Interestingly Volvo and Daimler just launched a (previously announced) JV to do something ~similar for trucks. Pro-tip: if someone says “we combine the agility of a startup and the structure of a corporate”...do not believe them.
Good news in maritime: a significant increase in orders for new build vessels to be either alternative or dual fuelled. Maybe we are starting to see a shift.
Goldman put out some thought leadership on the cost of decarbonization, and unfortunately on some technologies we are backsliding on abatement costs, especially in the tougher sectors.